Dodging the Costs of the Warfare Stateby Norman Solomon
www.dissidentvoice.org
September 24, 2005

The
New York Times began a new week with an editorial that typifies the
media mind-set of the warfare state.

The
Sept. 19 editorial warns of dire consequences from a growing deficit that
has been boosted by tax cuts -- in combination with “the pre-Katrina
priorities laid down by Mr. Bush.” Those priorities include a U.S.
military budget that has reached half a trillion dollars per year. But the
Times editorial does not devote a single word to military spending
or the Iraq war.

Why
not mention the option of an American pullout from Iraq, where the U.S.
war effort has already drained $200 billion from taxpayers? Well, those
who determine editorial positions at the New York Times -- and the
other major newspapers in the country -- cannot bring themselves to call
for a quick end to the U.S. military role in Iraq.

Fierce
criticism of White House policies is routinely compatible with support for
militarism. When the Times condemned the Bush administration’s
handling of hurricane relief in a Sept. 2 editorial, the final paragraph
included this unequivocal sentence: “America clearly needs a larger
active-duty Army.”

Now,
fiscal conservatives in Congress are squawking about what federal
expenditures for the Gulf Coast will do to the deficit. Contradictions
between humane rhetoric and death-machine spending are more glaring than
ever. The domestic economic toll of U.S. militarism should be on the table
-- not swept under the rug.

The
people of the United States are far ahead of politicians in Washington and
top editors in the New York Times building. On Sept. 17, the Times
reported the results of a poll it had just completed in tandem with CBS
News. Nationwide support for the Iraq war has fallen to an all-time low.
(“Only 44 percent now say the United States made the right decision in
taking military action against Iraq.”) And the survey also found: “With
Hurricane Katrina already costing the federal government tens of billions
of dollars, more than 8 in 10 Americans are very or somewhat concerned
that the $5 billion being spent each month on the war in Iraq is draining
away money that could be used in the United States.”

The
enormous financial burden of continuing with U.S. military intervention in
Iraq is an issue that could be devastating for the right-wing zealots who
now hold state power along Pennsylvania Avenue. But liberal elites who
refuse to call for swift withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq -- whether
congressional leaders of the Democratic Party or members of the New York
Times editorial board -- are in no position to hammer on that issue.

The
public should be hearing, much more often, the kind of insights that were
expressed by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953: “Every gun that is made,
every warship that is launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final
sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold
and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is
spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the
hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all, in any true
sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

It’s
up to the antiwar movement to directly address the connections between war
spending and economic distress that the Times/CBS poll says are matters of
concern for more than 80 percent of the public. Along the way, the
largesse for the Pentagon’s corporate contractors can be put in the
context of militarism that is killing many Americans and many more Iraqis.
This moment in history offers a crucial opportunity to widen opposition to
the Iraq war -- and the entire warfare state.